


Change Your Mind

by bankrobbery



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bankrobbery/pseuds/bankrobbery
Summary: It's a Tuesday in February, two weeks after Valentine's Day, when they meet.  It's right around the time that Nicky promises himself that he'll never fall in love again.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 70
Kudos: 593





	Change Your Mind

It's a Tuesday in February, two weeks after Valentine's Day, when they meet. It's right around the time that Nicky promises himself that he'll never fall in love again.

Nicky has made his own fair share of mistakes in his years at university. The list of things that have gone wrong in Nicky’s life up to this point in time could be summed up in a fairly wordy novel that prided itself on its ability to generate second hand embarrassment and which wouldn’t be amiss showing up on a Saturday afternoon on the Lifetime channel. 

First and foremost on this list of plights is that Nicky is a college student, which means that, by proxy, he is broke all of the damned time. The masters in psychology he’s working towards will look amazing hanging above the mantle someday and just think of all of those doors to teaching positions opening up that he has to look forward to after graduation, but that’s all something for Future Nicky to look forward to. Present Nicky has nothing but speculation, and anticipation, and hopeful dreams; Present Nicky is broke as fuck. 

The lack of money in his life is directly responsible for the majority of the other woes that have beset him over the years. His shitty apartment could be nicer if he could afford better, and his car wouldn’t be on its last leg if he had the extra cash laying around to get something better, and he never would have met Adam if he had shelled out money to pay for an English tutor rather than getting one through word of mouth. 

When Nicky had moved to North America originally to get his masters he hadn’t brought all that much with him. He had owned very little to start, and the room he was subletting wasn’t big enough to hold too much extra stuff regardless, but he had still found plenty of space to pack along his awful taste in men that’s been following him around since junior high. Because, in all honesty, Adam is a good looking man who had been blessed with a body right off the cover of Men’s Health, but he’s a parasite of a human being.

It had all started with the endearingly sweet Edith, who lived down the hall from Nicky and who bakes delicious bread the way her mother taught her and who shares with everyone on their floor because she was raised that way. She had invited him in for tea, what feels like an eon ago, had listened to his plight about needing some assistance in hammering out the inconsistencies and mistakes in his English. She had listened about how he had been short on funds to acquire one through his normal avenues, and she had offered up an easy solution. Her son had a friend who went to the same school, who was an English major and who did tutoring and who would help him out free as a favor owed to Edith. Nicky had been desperate enough to accept the help of his neighbor’s son’s estranged friend, because free is free and, as stated previously, he is a starving student in constant need of the charity of others.

That friend had turned out to be Adam, who had turned out to be exceptionally talented at what he did. 

Adam had been - Adam _is_ \- insufferable. A pretty face, an amazing body, but with the misfortune of being wasted upon a man who has the personality of a Long Island Iced Tea and the emotional capacity of a discarded gym sock. He is a great tutor, and an even better fuck, but he’s a terrible boyfriend and Nicky should know - he’s had his own fair share of terrible boyfriends over the years. Adam is a douchebag, who is so far up his own ass he somewhat resembles an ouroboros, and they had dated on and off again for the longest, most volatile six months of Nicky’s life. 

It had ended, as these things tended to, via the medium of text message two months ago, a mere two days before the showing of _Hamilton_ that Nicky had already bought them both tickets to see. It was one of the most trying weeks of Nicky’s life - first, discovering his own breakup via a hastily texted ‘sry theres sum1 else’; second, reevaluating all of his lost time to a guy who was, truly, not worth it at all; and third, the subsequent derailing of mutual friendships and hang out spots that happen with all break ups. Still, Nicky is nothing if not resilient. He had taken his best friend Andy to see Hamilton, and he had deleted all traces of his relationship from all of his social media, and he had moved the fuck on. There’s no reason to waste time thinking about someone who wasn’t worth your time to start, especially once the rose tinted glasses have come careening off. 

“I could break his nose for you,” Quynh, Andy’s girlfriend, had told him over coffee a few weeks ago. “He won’t bother you again.”

Quynh may have possibly been raised by wolves and has all of the social graces of a badger, but her heart had been in the right place. Nicky doesn’t have a large network of people he considers close friends, but the few he does have are fiercely loyal and already preparing their proverbial pitchforks and torches to come to his aid. Still though, violence is never the answer and fighting leaves such an awful taste in Nicky’s mouth. It would never set right with him to know his friend and his ex had gotten into a fight because of him, and he tells Quynh as much when she assures him her offer is serious. 

“It wouldn’t be a fight,” she had continued, reassuring. “It would be like a finishing move in Mortal Kombat, where I remove his spine while he’s still breathing.”

Either way, Nicky had wanted no part of it.

That was weeks ago though. The breakup itself was two months ago. New York is a giant place and, even if they do live in the same general neighborhood, Nicky pacifies himself with the thought that the odds of them running into each other is highly unlikely. After all, he hadn’t once ran into Adam before being introduced to him through Edith, so why would he continue to see him around campus now? 

So, of course, it is this line of thinking that ends up betraying him in the end. He turns around from grabbing his soy chai latte, psychology book tucked underneath his arm, and spies Adam walk right into the cafe like there aren’t twenty other places to purchase coffee on this block alone. 

And make no mistake: Adam is a tool. Adam is a jerk. Nicky does truly despise him for putting him through the emotional ringer and hanging him out to dry, but Adam is also unfairly attractive and apparently two months without seeing him hasn’t made him aggressively hideous. Which is truly unfair, because if there were any justice in this world Adam would have suddenly developed a hunchback or decided to start cutting his own hair or something else that would imply there was anything like karma still in the universe. 

Nicky is a pretty quick thinker and there are a couple of really great options as far as courses of action are concerned. The first would be hope that something really random and rare might happen - like, say, a meteor falling on the cafe and destroying them all. Barring that, there’s also a small chance the whole building might just spontaneously catch on fire and they’ll all be too worried about not burning alive that not one will notice him fleeing for the safety of his apartment. Maybe Nicky can pretend he fell into a coma for two months and lost his entire memory, leaving him without an inkling as to who Adam is or how he likes his eggs in the morning. Maybe Quynh will show up, Mortal Kombat music and all, and save the day. 

The most obvious solution is just to wait it out and hope that Adam doesn’t notice him, or that Adam recognizes how awkward it would be to engage in friendly conversation with an ex boyfriend you left on particularly dicey terms with. Then Nicky can sneak out while he’s ordering his drink and they can both go on with their lives without ever having to do something so horrendously misguided as interacting. In fact Adam is probably already almost to the counter, trying to figure out if he’s going to order his extra hot Americano or if he’s going to shake it up and get an Earl Grey, and Nicky hates that he remembers that. 

He looks over his shoulder, as quick as he possibly can, just to see if he's still there, but of course he is. Of course he spots Nicky the moment he looks back. Of course. Life: 1, Nicky: 0.

Nicky is certainly capable of moving on. Which, really, he's been doing quite fine the past two months. Despite the random text message he'd received at two in the morning, three days ago that was little more than ‘wyd?’ accompanied by an unsolicited dick pic. Nicky may have made some unfortunate choices in his past dating partners, but he’s not fucking stupid. He doesn’t go crawling back to douchebags who dump him via text message like they’re teenagers and he definitely doesn’t go back to douchebags who don’t want a real relationship with him, but who would still like a convenient bed-warmer on speed dial. 

Nicky refuses to be convenient.

“Nicky? Is that you?”

_‘No, it’s fucking Waldo_ ,’ Nicky wants to say, but doesn’t. He also doesn’t say, ‘ _Who else would it be?_ ’

Nicky considers just ignoring him and refusing to turn back around, but he can hear his mother in his head reminding him of his manners, so he turns around and flashes a bright smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Oh, Adam, hello,” he says, eyes widening in feigned surprise. “How funny to see you here.”

The honest truth of the matter is that it’s a lot easier to ignore someone when they’re a badly misspelled text message or unsolicited dick pic on a phone, miles and miles away, rather than standing just close enough to infringe upon what you had considered to be your own personal space. Because when Adam is here in front of him and he’s smiling like Nicky has said something unbearably charming, and he’s thought about what to wear rather than throwing on whatever is clean, and he’s remembered to shave and to wear that cologne that Nicky has always liked - well, it reminds Nicky of the good parts instead of the bad. 

Which is why their relationship had been so tumultuous for those six months. It’s why they had been on again off again and back on again for every one of those six months before Adam had broken things off for good. 

And, okay, Nicky has missed someone looking at him like he was something worth wanting. It’s hard to remind himself that all of Adam’s good parts are drastically outweighed by his bad parts, but it’s not hard to remember that, in the end, he hadn’t meant anything to Adam at all. 

There’s small talk between them, and some scarcely hidden flirting on Adam’s part, and all Nicky wants is to drink his soy chai latte and finish his reading in peace. There’s nothing here but thin promises and empty words that Nicky is all too familiar with and it’s not hard for him to keep politely declining Adam’s not so subtle hints. It is, however, incredibly difficult to get Adam to listen. Which, to be fair, was one of the problems they’ve always had. 

So it starts with Nicky running into his ex in his favorite coffee shop, but it ends with Nicky meeting his proverbial prince charming on a white steed.

Because there is suddenly an arm slipping confidently around his shoulders, a warm body comfortably close to his own, and someone is pressing a kiss with warm lips to his temple. Nicky stares blankly ahead, at the sudden trainwreck of emotions that Adam’s face goes through. 

“My love!” the man exclaims, and if Nicky's heart jumps around a little in his chest it could just be because he hasn't had lunch and he's hungry, but it also probably has to do with the devastatingly handsome man who is now attached to his side. His eyes are bright and warm, not unlike the smile that curves at his lips like it is a natural reaction to seeing Nicky’s face. “I have been looking everywhere for you!”

Nicky tries very hard not to stare, both out of manners and out of a desire to not seem as shallow as he currently feels, but the man clinging to him affectionately is gorgeous and Nicky is only human. It takes him an excruciatingly long couple of seconds to realize that this man is attempting to save him from the proverbial social black hole Adam has drug him into.

He relaxes into his savior and tries to fool himself into thinking it is a hardship to pretend to be enamored with this man. “Here I am.”

The man flashes him another brilliant smile that lights up his beautiful face, and then turns his head slowly, as though noticing Adam for the first time, and his smile falters just enough to be noticeable, “Oh, is this a friend of yours, habibi?”

Which, no. He's absolutely not. But Nicky's mother is forever a vision in his head, smacking him with her wooden spoon and reminding him that _he wasn't raised by wolves_ , so he forces another smile that is only half nervous and says, “Oh, yes, yes. This is Adam. Adam, this is...”

“Yusuf Al-Kaysani,” the man offers, but doesn't extend a hand. “Or Joe, if you prefer. It is a pleasure, Adam. Will you join us for a coffee?”

“I’ve got - uh - class, actually, I was just leaving,” Adam says then, perhaps a little too quickly. He looks a little confused, if not a little annoyed, but Joe's attention is already back on Nicky.

“Let me find us a table, my heart,” he says, grasping Nicky’s forearm briefly, affectionately, before releasing him and moving past him further into the cafe. 

Adam swallows nervously, like he wants to say something but also doesn’t want to hang around for long enough to alert Joe’s attention again, and then turns on his heel to head back to the counter to wait for his drink. 

Nicky glances across the cafe. Joe has indeed commandeered a table and is busy drawing in a sketchbook. It is obvious from his posture that this could be the end of their interaction; it is obvious that Joe is not truly waiting for him to join him, but Nicky tightens his hold on his coffee and makes his way across the cafe to do so regardless. 

“May I?” Nicky asks, gesturing to the empty chair.

Joe stares up at him, expression fond. “Please.”

Nicky takes a seat and tries not to feel nervous when Joe closes the sketchbook and gives him all of his attention. 

“Apologies if I overstepped,” Joe says, in a way that suggests he isn't the least bit sorry, his voice low as he leans in closer across the table, “but you did appear to need some assistance.”

The heat radiating from Nicky's face is probably sufficient enough to warm the room without resorting to central heating, and he's not even entirely sure what's happening in the world around him. It's actually incredibly difficult to focus on miniscule things like the atmosphere when his handsome savior is staring at him like there's no one else in the room. Maybe his taste in men isn’t as horrendous as he first thought.

“Oh,” Nicky manages. “Please. Assist away.”


End file.
